Issuer: Cecchi Gori
Date: March 1998
Amount: L475 billion ($284 million)
Bookrunner: Merrill Lynch
Vittorio Cecchi Gori, owner of the Italian holding company Cecchi Gori, is a notoriously mercurial character. In 1993 he had a row with the coach of his football team, Fiorentina AC. The coach, Luigi Radice, had brought the team up to an impressive third-place in the league by mid-season. But Cecchi Gori was angry for being challenged and promptly fired him. By the end of the season the team was relegated to a lower division. Cecchi Gori is also passionate about his film collection and the size of this deal was paramount to him. “The pricing on the deal was agreed to months before the launch. We never moved from it. But size was absolutely key. He wanted a minimum size because he was attached to his library,” says Dorian Klien, managing director of European structured finance at Merrill Lynch, which was sole bookrunner for the deal.
Cecchi Gori’s company made history with its issue of L475 billion ($284 million) seven-year asset-backed floating-rate notes. It was the first true securitization of a company’s library movies and movie rights.